In article <5bg46c$pd5 at lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> jkb at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk (James Bonfield) writes:
>My personal opinion is that in an ideal world our software should be
>free to other research organisations (especially to UK ones as, after
>all, it is the UK tax payer who ultimately pays our salaries). In the
>real world, partly due to our decision to charge minimal fees, we are
>finding it _extremely_ hard to continue our own funding. The facts
>have to be faced - the production of software has to be paid for. We
>suffer exactly the same problems in finding money to write software as
>other people do to find money to buy it, except for us the costs are
>greater.
Disobeying all usual USENET etiquette, after having reread what I've
said I feel that I should reply to my own post to clarify further.
The charge is made to cover our institutes costs in administration,
materials and postage for shipping the package. They are not intended
to make a profit or to fund the group. Also the cost has remained
unchanged for about 10 years! As for funding and its affect on the
cost of software: in the current climate it is difficult to obtain
non-commercial funding for work that is seen to have potential
commercial application.
James
--
James Bonfield (jkb at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk) Tel: 01223 402499 Fax: 01223 213556
Medical Research Council - Laboratory of Molecular Biology,
Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, England.
Also see Staden Package WWW site at http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/pubseq/
